Course Description:
This 4-unit course introduces the Dead Sea Scrolls and their relationship with early Jewish movements. The course will include extensive reading of the Scrolls in English translation (with discussion of some key Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words), an examination of the archaeology of the site of Qumran, and a survey of the broader sociopolitical context of Second Temple Judaism (586 BCE – 135 CE) out of which the scrolls emerged. The history of the discovery of the scrolls will be discussed, as will the interpretative methods used by scholars studying the scrolls over the past 60 years. The class will explore issues of Jewish sectarianism, canon and “scripture,” the role of the Temple, the place of the Torah, the re-writing of texts, interpretation of prophecy, messianic expectation(s), liturgy, and will compare and contrast the text of the scrolls with early Christian and Rabbinic texts.

The course makes extensive use of virtual reconstructions of the archaeological site of Qumran and digitized texts. Each lecture will be video cast on iTunes U and exams are taken online via CCLE/Moodle.

news reports announce that the multiple, geographically disparate sections of the oldest known complete bible, codex sinaiticus, have been digitized and have available to the public free of charge on one site: www.codexsinaiticus.org.

sinaiticus is significant not only because of what it is (the oldest known copy of the bible), but because of what it contains: the complete hebrew bible (christian old testament) and the complete new testament along with ‘epistle of barnabas,’ and portions of ‘the shepherd of hermas.’ that is to say, the ‘bible’ used to contain other books that were later weeded out during the canonization process. yes, the ‘word of god’ (should you define that as the biblical canon) changed over time.